Occupy Wall Street is feeding the propaganda machine of Progressivism with yet another Facebook Meme. This one claims a $16 wage helped Australia “dodge the global recession.”
Over the past year, increasing amounts of fast food and retail workers have been on strike demanding $15 an hour and better benefits and working conditions. Their struggle has spread nationwide, and their demands have been hotly debated in the media.
That being stated, Australia is currently heading into a recession all its own.
An out of control debt is leading Australia’s government slash welfare, cut public service jobs and raise taxes to cut a deficit forecast to reach $47 billion dollars in the current fiscal year ending June 30. This also includes cutting 16,000 government workers and freezing welfare payments for two years.
The mining boom that helped Australia’s economy for the last ten-years, paying for a series of personal income tax cuts, has fizzled in the past two years, wiping billions of dollars from the government’s tax revenue. And while the government reduced its net debt to zero before the 2008 financial crisis, but since then it’s has reached a 20 percent of GDP level.
The government also plans to strip $80 billion from hospitals and schools over the next ten-years, shifting the costs to the states to pick up and raising the prospect of an increase in Australia’s 10 percent consumption tax. Those on high salaries will face a temporary extra tax on their incomes.
The austerity plan is to cut the deficit to Australia’s $29.8 billion next year and $2.8 billion in 2017-18. The hope is to create a surplus by 2018-19.
In fact, Australia’s ‘The Daily Telegraph’ reported in January 2012 that the country’s economy shed 100,000 jobs in 2011, the first time more jobs were lost than created in any year since 1992.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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